Database Users

[Q] Samsung Galaxy S4 i9500 suddenly lost signal, imei, baseband, etc.

My i9500 has driven my crazy since yesterday, I even stayed up all night trying to find a way to restoring its IMEI. So here's the problem:
I was playing a game called "Friendly Fire" and decided to turn off its notifications using Application Manager. Everything was fine until a few hours later when I opened up my phone and saw the mobile signal was gone, only a circle with the diagonal dash inside it left. At that time I thought it was fine but then suddenly it popped up the message "Please enter SIM card unlock number" or sth like that, which was an error indeed because my i9500 is an unlocked version. I though it was the mobile network who locked the SIM, but when I tried putting the SIM into other phones, they all worked! And so I started to find a way to unlock my i9500 by ServiceMode Menu but I could never reach the ServiceMode Menu, it only showed a blank screen. I checked my IMEI and it now said "null/null". I had never rooted or flashed any ROM on it so it was really really strange. So I reached a topic on "how to solve the null/null IMEI" on i9500 because it seemed that many people got this problem. However, nothing helped I even rooted my phone to see whether I can back up then restore the 'efs' folder. Well, I did manage to do so but the IMEI would not change at all. The strange thing is that when the phone was just booted up, if I enter *#06# the IMEI shows "null/null", but if I enter *#1234# first then *#06# it shows the generic IMEI (0049...), which was useless as well. I tried different methods, flashing to different official stock rom, but nothing worked. Also, when I flashed an official stock rom, Kies did not show the right region of the firmware but "XXX" for every firmware I tried. And of course, my mobile signal was lost so I could not make any call/text/3G/LTE/etc., but the rest (wifi, bluetooth, gaming, etc.) was okay, it is basically an ipod touch right now
I wonder if anyone can help me with my problem? I know my real IMEI number (at the back of the phone) and that's it. I bought it from another country so it would not be possible for me to bring it to the Samsung store where I got it from. I could not remember the country where its first firmware came from Is there any way to find out that?
Many thanks for reading my trouble :crying:

Well this weird, I am wondering if an android virus could do that....
Sent from my GT-I9505 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Strange!!!! Is it original or china copy??
Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk 4

Black_Lion said:
Strange!!!! Is it original or china copy??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought it in the U.S. in July, from an official Samsung store. Well, the box containing the phone and the phone itself were "made in China", I thought most products have those words? It would be ridiculous if that is the problem because it also has a line like "Korean product"...
I wonder if Octopusbox or SPTbox may fix the problem? I don't know those two things very well though.

I had the same problem on a different samsung phone (Note 2) and i was getting imei 0049 or something like that, Basically my imei had changed or gone. The issue i found out to be a baseband issue so what i had done was downloaded a few compatible basebands and flashed them via odin and eventually got my imei back. There is also this link for you to have a look at http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/topic/77400-booting-issues-and-imei-loose/ just in case it helps. Hope you get sorted.

solve problem
According to your description， you can have a try resert your Samsung galaxy s 4 and then restart it to see weather it is OK? If it still not fine, send it to Samsung After-sales service

MY imei is different from my original S5

ok here is my problem
i have Samsung s5 from rogers
i when to Ghana so i wanted to use my phone there but it was lock so
took it to some guy to unlock it and it worked ok
when i came back and inserted my old sim
i get not registered to network and my imei is different from the box
i have tried flashing it with stock rom but still getting the same message
any body had this problem and how it they get it working
thanks

Unless you have made a backup of your original cert files nothing can be done, the shop in Ghana most likely used an IMEI from another handset and wrote it yours during the process this also unlocks your handset afaik .

up

N910F numerous issues in the last two weeks, should I give up and sell the phone?

Let me preface this with some quick info about the phone. I bought it two years ago and it was SIM locked to Vodafone, Vodafone basically told the guy selling it to me it'd take 6 weeks to unlock so to get around this I went to a third party phone shop who told me they unlocked it but it wasn't until later I realised they had actually changed the IMEI of the device to get it to work. This was okay though, the phone worked fine and didn't give any real issues until two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago my N910F on Kyubi Note 5 Port ROM began telling me "not registered on network" (couldn't make calls, texts or use 3G), I went through standard troubleshooting with my carrier and it didn't appear to be on their end (the SIM worked in a Galaxy S 3 I have spare). I decided to update to 6.0.1 stock from Sammobile using Odin to see if it solved the issue, unfortunately it didn't. I was advised by something I found online to check if the IMEI was blacklisted on Swappa- turned out it was. I brought it back to the shop who had originally changed the IMEI. The guy in the shop told me it wasn't blacklisted but the reason for no service was because the device had a sum of "none" where the serial number should be when you dial *#06#.
He "fixed" the devices by changing the IMEI again and reverting to 4.4.4. He told me not to update it and everything would be fine. Obviously I wasn't too happy with being stuck on KitKat so he told me if I need to come back within 2 weeks after breaking it again that he'll fix it for free. Now the phone on 4.4.4 was giving a serial number and everything appeared fine.
I flashed 6.0.1 onto it and again the S/N became "none", but everything still more or less worked despite this. Since then I have Rooted it, flashed TWRP and installed Xposed. Once I installed Xposed problems began to arise again, the phone is reporting the SD card as corrupted repeatedly, everytime the phone turns on, once finished booting I will get a black screen with just a navigation bar and an empty battery icon (then after 2-3 mins it's fine), 3G wouldn't work at all, wifi passwords aren't being remembered, following boot I get the error message "process system is not responding would you like to close it".
Thankfully I made a backup in TWRP before putting Xposed on the device and restored the system to that this morning, which fixed the 3G issue but all of the other problems are still there (despite not having been there before Xposed was installed).
What should I try now? Should I go back to the guy again? Should I try revert to stock 4.4.4 or 5.1.1 through Odin? I'm really tempted to just cut my losses and sell it, but I love the phone so much. Any help is massively appreciated.

piratezilla said:
Let me preface this with some quick info about the phone. I bought it two years ago and it was SIM locked to Vodafone, Vodafone basically told the guy selling it to me it'd take 6 weeks to unlock so to get around this I went to a third party phone shop who told me they unlocked it but it wasn't until later I realised they had actually changed the IMEI of the device to get it to work. This was okay though, the phone worked fine and didn't give any real issues until two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago my N910F on Kyubi Note 5 Port ROM began telling me "not registered on network" (couldn't make calls, texts or use 3G), I went through standard troubleshooting with my carrier and it didn't appear to be on their end (the SIM worked in a Galaxy S 3 I have spare). I decided to update to 6.0.1 stock from Sammobile using Odin to see if it solved the issue, unfortunately it didn't. I was advised by something I found online to check if the IMEI was blacklisted on Swappa- turned out it was. I brought it back to the shop who had originally changed the IMEI. The guy in the shop told me it wasn't blacklisted but the reason for no service was because the device had a sum of "none" where the serial number should be when you dial *#06#.
He "fixed" the devices by changing the IMEI again and reverting to 4.4.4. He told me not to update it and everything would be fine. Obviously I wasn't too happy with being stuck on KitKat so he told me if I need to come back within 2 weeks after breaking it again that he'll fix it for free. Now the phone on 4.4.4 was giving a serial number and everything appeared fine.
I flashed 6.0.1 onto it and again the S/N became "none", but everything still more or less worked despite this. Since then I have Rooted it, flashed TWRP and installed Xposed. Once I installed Xposed problems began to arise again, the phone is reporting the SD card as corrupted repeatedly, everytime the phone turns on, once finished booting I will get a black screen with just a navigation bar and an empty battery icon (then after 2-3 mins it's fine), 3G wouldn't work at all, wifi passwords aren't being remembered, following boot I get the error message "process system is not responding would you like to close it".
Thankfully I made a backup in TWRP before putting Xposed on the device and restored the system to that this morning, which fixed the 3G issue but all of the other problems are still there (despite not having been there before Xposed was installed).
What should I try now? Should I go back to the guy again? Should I try revert to stock 4.4.4 or 5.1.1 through Odin? I'm really tempted to just cut my losses and sell it, but I love the phone so much. Any help is massively appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Changing the IMEI is illegal in most countries and therefore the discussion thereof is prohibited on XDA.
Thread closed.

Samsung Galaxy S4 I9500 - NO SIGNAL (IMEI/IMEISV:null/null;Baseband Version:Unknown)

Hello everyone,
As this is my first thread, and I have been reading previous assists based on IMEI fixing and couldn't find the answer I am looking for, I really hope that the XDA community can help me fix my Galaxy S4 I9500. I will try to explain the problem the best I can, and I will create a list of every solution I have tried in the 3 week phone fixing saga I have.
1. The problem :
My friend decided he does not need this phone anymore, everything was fine with it except the battery was swollen(but I bought a new one so it doesn't matter). The day before he gave it to me, he accidentaly dropped it in the toilet and it couldn't boot. I opened the phone, cleaned it with alchohol and the phone booted up normally. The thing I noticed was that in the status bar the network symbol was replaced with No signal symbol. I tried 3 SIM cards and none worked. I decided to downgrade to 4.4.2 KitKat version and this is where everything went even worse. I used Odin to downgrade a firmware downloaded from sammobile.com, but I didn't create an /efs backup because I have flashed an Alcatel Idol 2 before and there were no problems with the IMEI or so. It turns out that Samsung devices are different and I am left with NO EFS BACKUP. I know, I should have checked what to do before flashing the device, but what's done is done. The device is doing everything great, there are no problems with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth either, except I cant connect to a network because IMEI is null/null and the Baseband is unknown. The thing is, I am not sure if the IMEI is wiped completely because of a hardware problem, or it's software related because of the /efs folder, because I am not a developer, but a civil engineer...
2. Solutions I've tried so far :
- Flashed many different Android versions;
- Flashed a Lollypop with adonis.pit with Re-partition checked on Odin;
- Tried writing an IMEI and repairing the EFS with Octoplus box;
- Tried flashing an EFS backup from my friend's Galaxy S4 I9500 ( IT IS ILLEGAL IN MANY COUNTRIES, NOT IN MINE, BUT I WANTED TO TRY AND CHANGE THE IMEI LATER SO IT WOULD NOT BE A PROBLEM );
- Tried flashing with a IMEI_null_fix.tar.md5 file which i found on a forum and that didn't fix it either;
- Tried KIES to return the stock ROM but either it does not recognize my device, or it says that my device could not be initialized or so;
- Took the phone to service, but in my town the only service we have is not very professional and they didn't even know the IMEI null does not mean that I will have no wireless connection/bluetooth connection, so they didn't fix it either;
- Tried with EFS Pro, Terminal Emulator and programs similar to those, 3rd party and PlayStore ones;
- Maybe other things but I could not remember because I think I tried everything...
I don't know if the problem can be fixed, but deep inside me I hope that there is a solution, and I think this is the best place to search for help, because it is a great phone and I don't want to throw it away just like that.
Thanks in advance everyone, hope you can come up with a solution.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 SM-N900 Region lock issue

I am done with my research and yes I came with a big F in my certificate. I am exhausted, disgusted and utterly pissed! With that said, here is what happened, what I did to solve it and what was the aftermath.
What happened?
I got a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 SM-N900 as a gift from my friend. He purchased it from United States. As you can expect, I wasn't aware of this popular issue for Galaxy Note 3 because I didn't plan on purchasing it. If I would, I would have done my research. The phone, as beautiful as it was, arrived in its perfect state and worked like charm with one of the Bangladesh carriers (I used Grameenphone just in case any of you were curious).
Things were working great until I had to go to US myself. I had a transit in Saudi Arabia for about 12 hours. In the meantime, I purchased on of their local SIM card and stuffed inside Galaxy Note 3 (stop biting your nails. I know I screwed up). It worked like charm too. Arrived in US. Purchased a T-Mobile SIM card and surprisingly it worked great with that one too.
Things changed when I came back to Bangladesh though. Now that I am in my home country, the baby doesn't recognize its mother anymore. Not even a single carrier's SIM card gets detected inside NOTE 3. Instead there is a "X" sign on the top of the SIM card icon. To make it worse, the IMEI number is also gone. I know you wouldn't believe but I didn't go through any flashing process whatsoever. The only thing happened is I changed my location geographically. Since then, I never got it working. I never actually tried to get it working as I had so many phones in my stock.
But things changed. With time, my primary and secondary phones disappeared and I am only left with my Galaxy Note 3 (the last one got stolen). As a last resort, I tried everything but failed. According to the popular issues in internet, my phone doesn't ask for any sort of codes whatsoever. I am actually never greeted with that screen. The problem I have is, no matter which SIM I put in, it never detects. Any network related number execution obviously returns with "Not registered under network" (codes like *#06#). Tried the Region unlock away app by Chainfire and also didn't work. Tried tonnes of custom ROMs that didn't solve either. Right now before posting this question, I am downloading the stock 5.0 firmware from SamMobile for Bangladesh carriers. I hope it works but it will be my final try. After that, I live that upon you experts. Can you suggest what to do?
The actual problem
1) No SIM card is detected.
2) IMEI and IMEI SV says Unknown
3) Also a nifty info is after I used the Region Lock Away, it said the process failed because it "couldn't locate CSC data! You could try flashing a CSC package to correct this"
4) Just if you are curious, yes of course my device is rooted and currently running Lineage OS.
Thanks in advance.

2) IMEI and IMEI SV says Unknown
RESTORE your backed up EFS folder .

JJEgan said:
2) IMEI and IMEI SV says Unknown
RESTORE your backed up EFS folder .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now would you call it a self destruct if I said I don't have anything backed up? The IMEI disappeared when I arrived in Bangladesh and turned the phone on with the local carrier.
There has to be some way to get the SIM working, right?

Self destruct if you mean fail to read the basics then yes.
Suggest search IMEI problem amongst theo thousands of posts one or two succeeded .
Sent from my SM-N930F using XDA-Developers Legacy app